Small World

So, the Openreach engineer came today instead of tomorrow and was here for around three hours.

During that time I discovered that he had played Gaelic football with my cousin Ann's son

And that he had been taught by another two of my cousins.

That he had dated another cousin's daughter.

His wife worked in a pharmacy that had once been a pub belonging to my uncle.

He was in the same cycling club as my cousin John's son.

And he also restored our broadband connection. 

Connections

I really need to keep tonight's blog post short and sweet as it is a Saturday (Treat Night) and that means I am drinking wine.

Tonight's story is about connections. Northern Ireland is a very small place and, I often think, take us all far back enough and we're probably all each other's cousins and, never mind all that Protestant and Catholic stuff, I reckon we married and mated all over the place in days gone by and we're all mixed up.

When Hannah was a teenager she'd mention a friend of hers and I'd say what's the surname, and she'd say, Mum! You wouldn't know him/her, yet nine times out of ten, if she even knew her friends' surname I'd know who they were.

So, this afternoon her friend's father gave her a lift home and he got invited in for a cup of tea and we got chatting about this and that. I've met him before, he's a local historian and before long we were chatting about the war years (after my time). he tells me that he was in Belfast when things started to get a bit hot and heavy and his father moved them to a place called Tannaghmore.

Tannaghmore! Tannaghmore where I was reared?

Yes. It's about halfway between Ballymena and Antrim.

I know! It's my home place. Where did you live?

There's three little houses, I think there is more than three now, near a pub, Byrne's pub.

 I know! Those three little houses (and the other one) where right at the top of the road I lived on.

Turns out he knew lots of people that I knew yet was gone from Tannaghmore 12 years before my mother got there and 13 before I was born. He even went to the same school my father attended. It's a small place, these six counties. All you have to do is get chatting. Incidentally,  the last time we chatted we discovered that one of his associate historians is my second cousin, once removed.

Connections

As others have commented, it is indeed, a small world. This past weekend Bert and I had two ‘dos’ to attend. The first was one of Glen and Mary’s leaving parties. They are going to Brisbane to live and are leaving tomorrow morning. The second do was for Laura who recently turned 21. Her mum, Mrs The Wee Manny, decided to throw a party for all the oldies who’ve watched Laura grow up. Or, to be more accurate, the party was for all the oldies that got totally wasted with Laura’s parents as she was growing up.

So I was socialising with a mixture of current friends (a few), old acquaintances (a few) and people I either hardly know or didn’t know at all. But, this being Norn Iron, there were a few connections.

There was the girl whose company I was in for the first time ever. She is the wife of a guy whose mother stole a lovely boy of me more than thirty years ago. She is also the daughter of a work colleague of the Mary who is emigrating to Australia. As well as all that she is the sister of the famous Dirt Bird who is one of my darling Hannah’s best friends.

The lovely boy who dumped me thirty years ago for Dirt Bird’s sister’s mother-in-law is the father of another lovely boy who is friends with Laura the Wee Manny’s daughter. Laura The Wee Manny’s daughter is going steady with an even lovelier boy in whose grandparent’s pub my aunt lived during the war.

In yet another connection Laura’s very lovely boy is the son of a man with whom my ex-husband worked with and was very friendly with when he lived in Norn Iron.

At one do there was a bloke whose older brother is the secret father of a fellow whose company we were in at the other do.

And then there was this Charlie bloke at Glen’s do whose father owns the pub where, twenty four years ago, the Wee Manny first introduced me to Bert and Mrs The Wee Manny. Incidentally this fellow was in the same class at primary school as Zoe and in the same class as Fresh Blade at grammar school.

And that was just the connections I either knew about or discovered. I wouldn’t doubt that if I’d had time to properly investigate the matter that I or somebody belonging to me was connected to every single person I met on those two evenings.